"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. it doesn't work, it's ergonomically terrible."
“Who wants a stylus? You have to get ’em and put ’em away, and you lose ’em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with—born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers.”
— Steve Jobs, 2007
(8 years before the introduction of the Apple Pencil)
When Steve Jobs said that, he was talking about a stylus as a main or even only input device. And he is still right about it. The Apple Pencil for the iPad never was a main input device but an alternative.
> (8 years before the introduction of the Apple Pencil)
I have briefly used one of the old PDAs with Windows Mobile and a stylus, and i have an ipad with an apple pencil.
They are two completely different experiences.
A stylus is clunky, particularly if you consider styluses as they were back in the day: pieces of dumb plastic with a specific shape to fit in the PDA itself, to be used on dumb resistive touch screens.
the apple pencil (as well as other modern styluses) are completely different, and work on capacitive touch screens.
The Pencil isn’t a stylus. At least not primarily. It’s designed for freehand. This is probably why they insisted on it charging via Lightning by removing its end cap. They didn’t want people getting ideas.
For a device that fits in your hand I understand his argument, for something that takes more than one hand to hold, I can see the usefulness of a different "pointer" device, but also, artists use things like the Apple Pencil, it makes way more sense.
The original "gorilla arm" UX research is much older. However, Microsoft surface was something of a niche hit, and spawned a number of clones. PC laptops with touchscreens are quite prevalent even if they're not in the full-hinge form factor. They work a lot better if you can lay the screen flat or at a low angle in your lap.
Re: the stylus sub-thread, I've actually used cheap Android resistive+stylus phones and a Compaq Palm Pilot clone and .. yes, they were really bad compared to modern phone interfaces. The stylus has a niche market for artists, who need a high quality pressure sensitive version.
(edit: attempting to find the original citation for "gorilla arm" takes me to the Jargon File and the early 1980s. Along the way I found the delightful existence of a UX researcher with the name Sebastian Boring, though)
I've used two touchscreen laptops during the Windows 7 era, and I'd largely agree with Jobs. It's great for some niche cases, but sits unused 99% of the time. Of course that was before Windows 8 completely redesigned the UI to better support touch, but that also hasn't lead to an appreciable portion of Windows laptops selling with touchscreens.
The Surface devices are a bit of an exception. For the tablets it works great. The convertibles that were a laptop with a screen that can turn into a tablet (or just be attached in reverse, so you have a very heavy but powerful tablet) were also great presentation laptops. Though apparently that niche was too small to support the exotic hardware. I don't quite get the appeal of the current surface laptops. But the ones I see in the wild are almost all the tablet surface devices.
That's only an argument against using it as the primary interface. There have been many, many times for me where it was so much easier to reach for the screen and touch a button, than to reach for the mouse and maneuver the cursor over the button to click it.
It shouldn't be the only way to interact, but as an option, it's awesome.
I had several PCs with touch screen and this absolutely true. Even intermittent use is not something I did, it’s just too inconvenient to ever become a habit, so the few times it’d be great, I don’t think about it being there because it’s not in my active list of affordances.
The problem with touchscreen laptops is you have to reach over the keyboard and trackpad to actually touch the screen to make it work, and that's physically uncomfortable and kind of inconvenient.
The answer is to make them fold flat so you're just looking at the screen with the keyboard facing away from you (and, ideally, disabled by a switch in the hinge so when you put it down you don't zkjltohtrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrolkmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Then, of course, it becomes annoying and inconvenient to use in a different way, but at least you get really really good at replacing the little flexi PCB ribbon that connects the screen through the hinge.
I work for a company which has developed a special purpose drawing (well, entry-level CAD) app, and for a long while, it didn't have keyboard shortcuts, and that was probably because I mostly used it on my Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10/Samsung Galaxy Book 12/Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, so would use it w/ touch and stylus, which was quick/natural enough that I never felt the need for keyboard shortcuts.
Such usages pretty much want a very flexible device though --- I'll often use mine fully flat on a lap desk and will rotate it in various ways depending on what I'm doing, and will then further mix in using my Kindle Scribe and Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ (which use the same stylus tech as the GB12/GB3Pro360).
Sometimes I'll add my MacBook into the mix by way of a Wacom One display, but I have a 1st gen unit, so no touch, so every so often I'll find myself dragging at it to scroll or tapping a control with my left hand to no effect.
I'd like to try Apple Sidecar on an iPad (which arguably is Apple's touch interface), but can't justify the expense, esp. for yet another stylus (I couldn't easily count how many I own, and carry a spare Lamy Wacom EMR in my sling bag), esp. a stylus which only works on one device.
Still waiting on Apple to make a replacement for the Newton --- the smallest size iPad which supports the Apple Pencil is close, but I need something daylight viewable, hence the Kindle Scribe (which I'm going to be replacing w/ the KS Colorsoft presently).
I have never owned a touchscreen laptop and I agree with most of the criticism in comments here against it. But after just briefly using one from my father I have to say there is some thing in our brain that makes it kinda more satisfying, if that is the right word, to touch on things that appear on a screen. Even as a power user being used to just using keyboard most of the time, after 10 minutes with a touchscreen my mind prefers to touch on screen instead of touchpad.
If that's the case then the interface will remain a compromise that has to work for both point and touch, and ends up being suboptimal for both. Touch input necessitates bigger hit targets, lots of additional negative space around important buttons rather than groups, and a much lower information density on anything that has a click/touch handler like a list in order to avoid accidental presses. Apps need to be written with a touch UI in mind to work well.
The reason you want a touchscreen on a laptop isn't so that you can use it for "an extended period of time" but rather so that you can use it to do the few things that are painful with a touchpad, like drag and drop.
I know I don't want, nor do I want anyone else, touching my Mac screen. Steve Jobs quote notwithstanding. They are pretty good at getting dirty on their own.
I have used a couple of laptops with touchscreens, and the experience was awful, even with the latest technology. If Apple gave us an iPhone or iPad-quality touchscreen on MacBooks, I am 100% sure the experience would be perfect.
Yeah, but this was also strategically in Apple's interest to sell the iPads with nerfed up iPad OS as a separate line up. I love Steve Jobs and all, but this did NOT age well. The millions of people using Surface and Surface Pro will absolutely disagree with this take.
Yeah I have a Surface Laptop Studio. Windows 11 is generally awful to the point where I have switched to Bazzite for my desktop, but the form factor with touch support (and pen support) is great. Easel mode is great for drawing, tablet mode is pretty good for drawing as well and also for casual browsing or for displaying DND character sheet info. Even in laptop mode sometimes I find myself using it to scroll a bit on pages.
I wouldn't want a touchscreen MBP even if it was free, anyone else feel similar?
I don't get the draw - we already optimize for keyboard commands to avoid living our fingers over to a touchpad. Why would I want to start clicking on my screen?
If you're using your computer for tasks (rather than entertainment) and you're not a visual designer, I don't get why Apple are apparently going to be putting them into the new MBP line later this year.
I feel like the point isn't "there should be a touch screen MacBook" but more "holy shit we simulated a working touch screen by looking at reflections coming off the glass, isn't that cool".
Sometimes, if I’ve been using my iPad for awhile and switch over to my MBP, I might reach out and touch the screen out of habit. I can’t be the only one.
I had the opposite problem when work issued me a ThinkPad - I would accidentally brush my screen with my caveman knuckles once a day and somehow nuke a dozen lines of code.
My kids do this all the time. They also use the touchscreen in conventional laptop configuration (not folded-flat tablet mode) on their Chromebooks all the time. It's bizarre to me. I'm always trying to get them to use the keyboard, but they don't care. Example: enter password on the keyboard, then tap the log in button on the screen with their finger, rather than just pressing enter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had a laptop that folded to 180, without touch screen, and had a webcam hidden under F7 so it either looked straight up your nose or showed your huge fingers
You're essentially holding a large tablet upright, but all the weight is taken up up the base. Rather than finger-painting, try holding it on both sides like a tablet or gamepad and operating with thumbs.
Scrolling/controlling checkboxes and switches feels GREAT. Depends entirely what you're using it for.
While I'm the same and totally agree with you, the few times I've been using touchscreen I find the habit sticks so hard that for days I keep touching my macbook screen, so there is definitely some subconscious desire for this (or I would have defaulted to using the trackpad even if my brain thought touch was available)
Because it would blur the lines between the iPad and MacBook to much. Right now it's two clearly distinct product lines, with separate use cases. Adding touch to the MacBook could hurt iPad sales (in the pro segment).
I also think Apple knows that their laptops doesn't need touch. It's a gimmick and adds nothing to the usability, but raises the cost.
All my Windows laptops have touch screens and I love it. What is the problem with having another input method available? You only use it when it’s appropriate.
Tech-reviewers keep harping on the MacBook for not having a touch option, but I think it's mostly of check a box.
Something no one seems to address is that it makes no sense to have touch on the laptop screen, because you honestly don't use it much, at least in a professional setting. You'll always dock your laptop anyway, either for comfort, or legal compliance (or both). My 27" monitor doesn't have touch, that's what I use 99% of the time, the laptop screen is a small auxiliary screen on the side. Why I reach out and touch it? That's also why the touch bar made no sense, it was on a keyboard that I almost never use.
It just feels ancient and weird now that I can tap every screen I own, except my Mac. I don't want to replace the Mac's keyboard & mouse with a touchscreen, I would simply like it to support touch.
(This also made me realize the impending obsolescence of the Studio Monitor XDR: no touch support.)
> I wouldn't want a touchscreen MBP even if it was free, anyone else feel similar?
I don’t want a touchscreen MBP, but as long as touching the screen is an optional interaction and everything else is the same, I see no reason to reject it if it was free. I can just not touch the screen.
> we already optimize for keyboard commands to avoid living our fingers over to a touchpad.
“We” is a much smaller percentage of people than you’re likely thinking of. We’re outliers, not the norm. Yes, even amongst professionals.
I wouldn't want a touch screen to become the primary input device, but I think it would be useful on occasion. Not entirely unlike how we still have touchpads even though we try to use keyboard commands.
I have 2-3 old touchscreen laptops lying around. The touchscreen is useless to me. Worse than useless. If I ever use it, it’s accidentally, and I end up annoyed.
Well, when I am doing rather thinking work, so not type in commands as fast as possible - I very much do like my laptop to have a touchscreen. It is way more ergonomic and comfortable, but yes, slower. But when the real work happens in my head, I like to be rather comfortable.
(Also I can immediately test touch features of the apps I develope)
Seems like it only makes sense if it's a hybrid tablet laptop like the Yoga. Otherwise it's a nice gimmick. I can also see Apple being terrified at someone's dirty fingers smudging the laptop, though they'd have some anti-smudge coating built in at that point
Macs are definitely not optimized for keyboard commands. If you feel the software you use is keyboard optimized, odds are it's not really Mac software.
Linux/windows: ctrl+shift+c (unless you want to cripple proper ctrl+c functionality in which case you can (maybe) activate it from a UI menu)
The command key on Mac is somewhat magical and engages in all sorts of productivity and finger efficiency related context switching so that you can do more with less physical movement.
I’m genuinely curious who you think does it better
macOS has been one of the best keyboard OSes for over a decade, maybe longer. Nearly everything is bindable without additional software or third party apps. This can be done on globally or app-specific. A lot of this comes from the deep script ability that used to be a priority but has fallen by the wayside in recent years.
I completely disagree. I've got a laptop with a touch screen, and it's occasionally very useful. It's rarely my primary input method, but when you're not constantly using the mouse, how often do you lose track of where the mouse cursor is? Instead of reaching for the mouse, figuring out where the cursor is, and then carefully maneuvering it over the button I want to click, I can just reach out to the screen.
A touch screen is incredibly useful when you're not currently already holding your mouse. It's easier to switch from keyboard to touch than from keyboard to mouse.
Yes, I feel like it'll be a degrade in quality if they do this with any of their current line up. If they want to make a Macbook Ultra or whatever with it, that's fine -- I would have no interest in it.
Love it! I appreciate the ethos of doing more with existing hardware. Adding an actual touchscreen would add real COGs to a macbook, and many potential failure points. Using the existing camera hardware + software seems to produce a "good enough" result for most people for casual use. I'm sure with some time and eng, Apple could make the "hack" shippable. But it doesn't earn product managers the big big bonuses, so it'll never happen.
It's actually quite pleasant user experience for scrolling. Some interactions are better with a pointer, others are better with touch.
You can try it on an iPad with Magic Keyboard attached, it's very good to be able to do precision through the trackpad and then casually move large things on the screen with your fingers.
Honestly I just hate having fingerprints on a screen. And I use pageup/pagedown mostly which to me is better than scrolling.
Trackpad is nice for a device you can lay flat on a table or keep on one hand while sitting on the sofa, not too much when the device has a keyboard permanently attached to it and it cannot fold. I know I have a thinkpad like that and I never use the touchscreen.
As long as there's a way to maintain the current display density, that would be just fine.
However, like on Windows, I suspect macOS would increase the tap target size on lots of the touchable elements. Even if I don't use the touchscreen, I would still have to pay the touch target real estate tax in my applications.
My previous work provided laptop had a touchscreen and I miss it (for the record, the screen didn't fold 180). It was useful about once a week and I completely forgot about it the rest of the time.
Two primary use cases. Sitting on the train with the laptop in my actual lap it was often more convenient to reach for the screen instead of the trackpad, especially when I had someone sitting next to me on the right and I didn't want to stab them in their ribcage with my elbow so I could reach the trackpad. Second use case was often scrolling while reading, for some reason (phone-scrolling-indoctrination I guess) it felt natural to scroll using finger on screen.
The screen was never my primary pointing device but it was always an option. I think it was annoying a handful of times during the two years I had it, you point at something on the screen and end up clicking something.
Which skin colours? The image below that has a lot of colours that I'd associate with darker skin colours, and they're not included in the triggering zone. I'd be interested to see some data on hoe well it works with someone who has dark skin
People use their laptops under various lighting conditions. I can imagine it would be difficult (or likely impossible) to bring this PoC to a solid production level technology. It looks like a fun project though.
This project brings back memories. I worked somewhere over 20 years ago where we were working on something just like this (touch displays using cameras). The biggest challenge was definitely the lighting conditions as you mentioned. We tried to rely on natural light but it was too unreliable. Darker skin tones were harder to pick up, and then you had issues with random reflections, light and shadow being cast on the screen, etc., which would make the system detect spurious fingers and touches.
We also had algorithms to detect finger shape to detect location of the pointer and when you were touching the screen. I saw way too many videos of fingers touching screens back then, so it's funny to see similar video clips here.
It sounds like a fun project. I worked on a vision based biometric system that used near infrared light as its light source. NIR was supposed to be more stable than natural light but we still experienced issues similar to yours. We found that certain problems appeared at different times of day, and the system also struggled to handle the diversity of people.
I think I could do this for less than 15 cents: four small peices of double sided tape, and the tiny mirror, and two hair pins... but the software? Priceless.
As other people mentioned this is obviously not something I would want in my notebook... but I can still appreciate the cool tech!
I can also definitely see this kind of thing being used in things budget outdoor displays, specially if the UI is made to accommodate the lack of accuracy, and the camera is positioned on the side (since these displays are usually vertical).
Difficult to capture reflections across a large screen while also dealing with outdoor lighting, glare, and moisture. The touchscreen part isn't usually what makes outdoor signage expensive compared to IP65, temperature control, and a secure housing, all of which would still need to apply here.
This looks like a neat option for retrofitting, and I suspect it'd work for some non-screen glass applications too. A combined IR/visible light solution would be interesting too, since I suspect those are complimentary (IR touch has issues with radiant light, while this wouldn't; this would have issues with low/no light, while IR wouldn't).
I almost hear that screen cracking when accidentally closing macbook with the camera inside...
I love Mac since I started using it in 2020, but boy this hardware is fragile. I am scared that I will be held accountable for fixing a broken screen of my work MBP
I don't even imagine how I would be tapping on the screen of my MacBook, not because of its form factor or design, but because of the macOS system itself. It's a different story with the iPad where you can do it endlessly...
Using an external webcam is that not more than $1? cool project though; reminds me of how you could use a Wii remote to create a interactive whiteboard.
Oleophobic coating is standard on phones and tablets, which is part of why they don’t pick up fingerprints as easily.
Some brands offer coating you can DIY yourself (eg ProofTech OLEOPEL) but these seem mostly designed for phone screens. I don’t know whether they’d be as effective on laptop screens
I always say, people who want a touchscreen on their Laptop never used a really good trackpad.
I never missed a touchscreen on my MacBook but when I do something on someone else’s Windows Laptop I often prefer to touch the screen because the trackpad is just terrible.
It's honestly kind of amazing how many things seem to never be tested by anyone with long fingernails. My favorite was the time I picked up a video game controller and physically could not use it because the buttons were in a stylish little recess that meant my thumbnail would have to pass through the plastic housing before I could get the button to make contact.
> why would I ever choose to put fingers on that beautful screen ... I don't get it!
I'm not sure, but bare in mind that the iPad is almost as large of a market as the Mac at this point, and the iPhone has long surpassed Mac revenue. Touching your computer is a very popular sentiment among the grimy-handed public.
Still an amazing hack today and I love it. However, I heard Apple are developing a touch screen MacBook this year, and I simply don't get why they're doing that. I don't know what's worse, the ergonomics or the fingerprints.
I have been around touch screen Windows laptops for I don’t know how many years now, and I have never felt even the slightest compulsion to touch the screen.
"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. it doesn't work, it's ergonomically terrible."
-Steve Jobs, 2010
https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-touch-screen-mac-...
“Who wants a stylus? You have to get ’em and put ’em away, and you lose ’em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with—born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers.”
— Steve Jobs, 2007
(8 years before the introduction of the Apple Pencil)
When Steve Jobs said that, he was talking about a stylus as a main or even only input device. And he is still right about it. The Apple Pencil for the iPad never was a main input device but an alternative.
> (8 years before the introduction of the Apple Pencil)
I have briefly used one of the old PDAs with Windows Mobile and a stylus, and i have an ipad with an apple pencil.
They are two completely different experiences.
A stylus is clunky, particularly if you consider styluses as they were back in the day: pieces of dumb plastic with a specific shape to fit in the PDA itself, to be used on dumb resistive touch screens.
the apple pencil (as well as other modern styluses) are completely different, and work on capacitive touch screens.
The Pencil isn’t a stylus. At least not primarily. It’s designed for freehand. This is probably why they insisted on it charging via Lightning by removing its end cap. They didn’t want people getting ideas.
For a device that fits in your hand I understand his argument, for something that takes more than one hand to hold, I can see the usefulness of a different "pointer" device, but also, artists use things like the Apple Pencil, it makes way more sense.
And here we are, and the Pencil STILL doesn't work on the defectively oversized trackpads on Apple laptops.
So... we're talking about more than one blunder here.
The original "gorilla arm" UX research is much older. However, Microsoft surface was something of a niche hit, and spawned a number of clones. PC laptops with touchscreens are quite prevalent even if they're not in the full-hinge form factor. They work a lot better if you can lay the screen flat or at a low angle in your lap.
Re: the stylus sub-thread, I've actually used cheap Android resistive+stylus phones and a Compaq Palm Pilot clone and .. yes, they were really bad compared to modern phone interfaces. The stylus has a niche market for artists, who need a high quality pressure sensitive version.
(edit: attempting to find the original citation for "gorilla arm" takes me to the Jargon File and the early 1980s. Along the way I found the delightful existence of a UX researcher with the name Sebastian Boring, though)
I've used two touchscreen laptops during the Windows 7 era, and I'd largely agree with Jobs. It's great for some niche cases, but sits unused 99% of the time. Of course that was before Windows 8 completely redesigned the UI to better support touch, but that also hasn't lead to an appreciable portion of Windows laptops selling with touchscreens.
The Surface devices are a bit of an exception. For the tablets it works great. The convertibles that were a laptop with a screen that can turn into a tablet (or just be attached in reverse, so you have a very heavy but powerful tablet) were also great presentation laptops. Though apparently that niche was too small to support the exotic hardware. I don't quite get the appeal of the current surface laptops. But the ones I see in the wild are almost all the tablet surface devices.
That's only an argument against using it as the primary interface. There have been many, many times for me where it was so much easier to reach for the screen and touch a button, than to reach for the mouse and maneuver the cursor over the button to click it.
It shouldn't be the only way to interact, but as an option, it's awesome.
Yeah, as I noted elsethread, I use a proprietary drawing program thus, and it allowed the program to work w/o keyboard shortcuts for years....
I wonder what people will say when Apple releases the touch screen MacBook later this year then.
They'll say it sucks ass, and they'll be right.
Touchscreen computers have failed for a reason.
Then again... so did "transparent" UI, which Apple just exhumed.
That it’s a silly idea, mostly. But some people will love it. As with anything Apple does.
(Longtime Apple user.)
I had several PCs with touch screen and this absolutely true. Even intermittent use is not something I did, it’s just too inconvenient to ever become a habit, so the few times it’d be great, I don’t think about it being there because it’s not in my active list of affordances.
The problem with touchscreen laptops is you have to reach over the keyboard and trackpad to actually touch the screen to make it work, and that's physically uncomfortable and kind of inconvenient.
The answer is to make them fold flat so you're just looking at the screen with the keyboard facing away from you (and, ideally, disabled by a switch in the hinge so when you put it down you don't zkjltohtrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrolkmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Then, of course, it becomes annoying and inconvenient to use in a different way, but at least you get really really good at replacing the little flexi PCB ribbon that connects the screen through the hinge.
Then, on the rare occasion where you do use it, you end up with a single finger smudge that lasts until you find the will to clean it.
I work for a company which has developed a special purpose drawing (well, entry-level CAD) app, and for a long while, it didn't have keyboard shortcuts, and that was probably because I mostly used it on my Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10/Samsung Galaxy Book 12/Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, so would use it w/ touch and stylus, which was quick/natural enough that I never felt the need for keyboard shortcuts.
Such usages pretty much want a very flexible device though --- I'll often use mine fully flat on a lap desk and will rotate it in various ways depending on what I'm doing, and will then further mix in using my Kindle Scribe and Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ (which use the same stylus tech as the GB12/GB3Pro360).
Sometimes I'll add my MacBook into the mix by way of a Wacom One display, but I have a 1st gen unit, so no touch, so every so often I'll find myself dragging at it to scroll or tapping a control with my left hand to no effect.
I'd like to try Apple Sidecar on an iPad (which arguably is Apple's touch interface), but can't justify the expense, esp. for yet another stylus (I couldn't easily count how many I own, and carry a spare Lamy Wacom EMR in my sling bag), esp. a stylus which only works on one device.
Still waiting on Apple to make a replacement for the Newton --- the smallest size iPad which supports the Apple Pencil is close, but I need something daylight viewable, hence the Kindle Scribe (which I'm going to be replacing w/ the KS Colorsoft presently).
I have never owned a touchscreen laptop and I agree with most of the criticism in comments here against it. But after just briefly using one from my father I have to say there is some thing in our brain that makes it kinda more satisfying, if that is the right word, to touch on things that appear on a screen. Even as a power user being used to just using keyboard most of the time, after 10 minutes with a touchscreen my mind prefers to touch on screen instead of touchpad.
...wait until you see Munority Report.
Nobody forces you to use touchscreen exclusively?
If that's the case then the interface will remain a compromise that has to work for both point and touch, and ends up being suboptimal for both. Touch input necessitates bigger hit targets, lots of additional negative space around important buttons rather than groups, and a much lower information density on anything that has a click/touch handler like a list in order to avoid accidental presses. Apps need to be written with a touch UI in mind to work well.
You say that now. And yet Apple now forces you to use shitty Bluetooth headphones to listen to its most popular music player.
The reason you want a touchscreen on a laptop isn't so that you can use it for "an extended period of time" but rather so that you can use it to do the few things that are painful with a touchpad, like drag and drop.
That is painful for you on a touchpad?
I know I don't want, nor do I want anyone else, touching my Mac screen. Steve Jobs quote notwithstanding. They are pretty good at getting dirty on their own.
Yea but now they're selling $400+ Magic Keyboards for iPads which then function exactly in this vertical way. No difference. I've typed this on one.
I have used a couple of laptops with touchscreens, and the experience was awful, even with the latest technology. If Apple gave us an iPhone or iPad-quality touchscreen on MacBooks, I am 100% sure the experience would be perfect.
I have a laptop with a touchscreen that I regularly forget is a touchscreen until I accidentally touch it.
Yeah, but this was also strategically in Apple's interest to sell the iPads with nerfed up iPad OS as a separate line up. I love Steve Jobs and all, but this did NOT age well. The millions of people using Surface and Surface Pro will absolutely disagree with this take.
Yeah I have a Surface Laptop Studio. Windows 11 is generally awful to the point where I have switched to Bazzite for my desktop, but the form factor with touch support (and pen support) is great. Easel mode is great for drawing, tablet mode is pretty good for drawing as well and also for casual browsing or for displaying DND character sheet info. Even in laptop mode sometimes I find myself using it to scroll a bit on pages.
did steve jobs ever see an easel?
I wouldn't want a touchscreen MBP even if it was free, anyone else feel similar?
I don't get the draw - we already optimize for keyboard commands to avoid living our fingers over to a touchpad. Why would I want to start clicking on my screen?
If you're using your computer for tasks (rather than entertainment) and you're not a visual designer, I don't get why Apple are apparently going to be putting them into the new MBP line later this year.
I feel like the point isn't "there should be a touch screen MacBook" but more "holy shit we simulated a working touch screen by looking at reflections coming off the glass, isn't that cool".
Sometimes, if I’ve been using my iPad for awhile and switch over to my MBP, I might reach out and touch the screen out of habit. I can’t be the only one.
I had the opposite problem when work issued me a ThinkPad - I would accidentally brush my screen with my caveman knuckles once a day and somehow nuke a dozen lines of code.
My kids do this all the time. They also use the touchscreen in conventional laptop configuration (not folded-flat tablet mode) on their Chromebooks all the time. It's bizarre to me. I'm always trying to get them to use the keyboard, but they don't care. Example: enter password on the keyboard, then tap the log in button on the screen with their finger, rather than just pressing enter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My father did within six months of owning an iPhone.
I don’t understand touchscreens on laptops that aren’t designed to fold flat. It’s got the feel of finger painting an unconstrained birthday balloon.
I had a laptop that folded to 180, without touch screen, and had a webcam hidden under F7 so it either looked straight up your nose or showed your huge fingers
You're essentially holding a large tablet upright, but all the weight is taken up up the base. Rather than finger-painting, try holding it on both sides like a tablet or gamepad and operating with thumbs.
Scrolling/controlling checkboxes and switches feels GREAT. Depends entirely what you're using it for.
While I'm the same and totally agree with you, the few times I've been using touchscreen I find the habit sticks so hard that for days I keep touching my macbook screen, so there is definitely some subconscious desire for this (or I would have defaulted to using the trackpad even if my brain thought touch was available)
It is indeed addictively intuitive. Once these people get to use it for a week, they won’t ever be able to look back.
> I don't get why Apple are apparently going to be putting them into the new MBP line later this year.
Apple has apparently being going to put a touchscreen in a laptop every year since the iPad came out, and it's never materialized.
Previously, those were rumors from enthusiasts who wanted to see it. Now it's an internal leak so there's a lot more credibility to those rumors.
Because it would blur the lines between the iPad and MacBook to much. Right now it's two clearly distinct product lines, with separate use cases. Adding touch to the MacBook could hurt iPad sales (in the pro segment).
I also think Apple knows that their laptops doesn't need touch. It's a gimmick and adds nothing to the usability, but raises the cost.
All my Windows laptops have touch screens and I love it. What is the problem with having another input method available? You only use it when it’s appropriate.
Tech-reviewers keep harping on the MacBook for not having a touch option, but I think it's mostly of check a box.
Something no one seems to address is that it makes no sense to have touch on the laptop screen, because you honestly don't use it much, at least in a professional setting. You'll always dock your laptop anyway, either for comfort, or legal compliance (or both). My 27" monitor doesn't have touch, that's what I use 99% of the time, the laptop screen is a small auxiliary screen on the side. Why I reach out and touch it? That's also why the touch bar made no sense, it was on a keyboard that I almost never use.
It just feels ancient and weird now that I can tap every screen I own, except my Mac. I don't want to replace the Mac's keyboard & mouse with a touchscreen, I would simply like it to support touch.
(This also made me realize the impending obsolescence of the Studio Monitor XDR: no touch support.)
Why though? What compels you to even want that?
> I wouldn't want a touchscreen MBP even if it was free, anyone else feel similar?
I don’t want a touchscreen MBP, but as long as touching the screen is an optional interaction and everything else is the same, I see no reason to reject it if it was free. I can just not touch the screen.
> we already optimize for keyboard commands to avoid living our fingers over to a touchpad.
“We” is a much smaller percentage of people than you’re likely thinking of. We’re outliers, not the norm. Yes, even amongst professionals.
I wouldn't want a touch screen to become the primary input device, but I think it would be useful on occasion. Not entirely unlike how we still have touchpads even though we try to use keyboard commands.
I have 2-3 old touchscreen laptops lying around. The touchscreen is useless to me. Worse than useless. If I ever use it, it’s accidentally, and I end up annoyed.
Why? Better than a track pad.
Use a Surface Pro some time. If you are just casually browsing or reading a website. I find it much nicer to just tap on a link or swipe to scroll.
Well, when I am doing rather thinking work, so not type in commands as fast as possible - I very much do like my laptop to have a touchscreen. It is way more ergonomic and comfortable, but yes, slower. But when the real work happens in my head, I like to be rather comfortable.
(Also I can immediately test touch features of the apps I develope)
Seems like it only makes sense if it's a hybrid tablet laptop like the Yoga. Otherwise it's a nice gimmick. I can also see Apple being terrified at someone's dirty fingers smudging the laptop, though they'd have some anti-smudge coating built in at that point
I very much would want a touchscreen for my use cases.
Sometimes I feel the urge to do some art, and the bigger surface might allow that. Perhaps in lieu, make a bigger trackpad.
The ergonomic aspects are horrible. I believe there's actual research on this from the 70s/80s/90s.
Maybe they solved the greasy fingers leaving smudges on your screen problem with a new surface. :D
Macs are definitely not optimized for keyboard commands. If you feel the software you use is keyboard optimized, odds are it's not really Mac software.
Absolute base line example.
Copy text in terminal
Mac: command+c
Linux/windows: ctrl+shift+c (unless you want to cripple proper ctrl+c functionality in which case you can (maybe) activate it from a UI menu)
The command key on Mac is somewhat magical and engages in all sorts of productivity and finger efficiency related context switching so that you can do more with less physical movement.
I’m genuinely curious who you think does it better
macOS has been one of the best keyboard OSes for over a decade, maybe longer. Nearly everything is bindable without additional software or third party apps. This can be done on globally or app-specific. A lot of this comes from the deep script ability that used to be a priority but has fallen by the wayside in recent years.
Huh? Of all the wonky shit about my Mac, the flawless keyboard navigation is really none of that
It would make sense if the screen folded over. In a laptop form factor a touch screen is just annoying because it keeps pushing the screen back.
I completely disagree. I've got a laptop with a touch screen, and it's occasionally very useful. It's rarely my primary input method, but when you're not constantly using the mouse, how often do you lose track of where the mouse cursor is? Instead of reaching for the mouse, figuring out where the cursor is, and then carefully maneuvering it over the button I want to click, I can just reach out to the screen.
A touch screen is incredibly useful when you're not currently already holding your mouse. It's easier to switch from keyboard to touch than from keyboard to mouse.
I agree. I've never wanted a touch screen on my laptop. My screen gets smudged enough already.
The benefit of a touchscreen MBP is that Apple will be forced to make their screens more protective.
Yes, I feel like it'll be a degrade in quality if they do this with any of their current line up. If they want to make a Macbook Ultra or whatever with it, that's fine -- I would have no interest in it.
But the Touch Bar was such a resounding success …
as long as it works well, would rather have it than not (but don't want to pay extra, so yeah... leave it out)
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Love it! I appreciate the ethos of doing more with existing hardware. Adding an actual touchscreen would add real COGs to a macbook, and many potential failure points. Using the existing camera hardware + software seems to produce a "good enough" result for most people for casual use. I'm sure with some time and eng, Apple could make the "hack" shippable. But it doesn't earn product managers the big big bonuses, so it'll never happen.
Touch screens are not pleasant for laptops. I prefer not to have them.
It's actually quite pleasant user experience for scrolling. Some interactions are better with a pointer, others are better with touch.
You can try it on an iPad with Magic Keyboard attached, it's very good to be able to do precision through the trackpad and then casually move large things on the screen with your fingers.
Honestly I just hate having fingerprints on a screen. And I use pageup/pagedown mostly which to me is better than scrolling.
Trackpad is nice for a device you can lay flat on a table or keep on one hand while sitting on the sofa, not too much when the device has a keyboard permanently attached to it and it cannot fold. I know I have a thinkpad like that and I never use the touchscreen.
Agree for iPad. But for a laptop trackpads ftw!
You don't have to use it.
As long as there's a way to maintain the current display density, that would be just fine.
However, like on Windows, I suspect macOS would increase the tap target size on lots of the touchable elements. Even if I don't use the touchscreen, I would still have to pay the touch target real estate tax in my applications.
you will accidentally touch the screen more often that you think.
My previous work provided laptop had a touchscreen and I miss it (for the record, the screen didn't fold 180). It was useful about once a week and I completely forgot about it the rest of the time.
Two primary use cases. Sitting on the train with the laptop in my actual lap it was often more convenient to reach for the screen instead of the trackpad, especially when I had someone sitting next to me on the right and I didn't want to stab them in their ribcage with my elbow so I could reach the trackpad. Second use case was often scrolling while reading, for some reason (phone-scrolling-indoctrination I guess) it felt natural to scroll using finger on screen.
The screen was never my primary pointing device but it was always an option. I think it was annoying a handful of times during the two years I had it, you point at something on the screen and end up clicking something.
> "Filter for skin colors and binary threshold"
Which skin colours? The image below that has a lot of colours that I'd associate with darker skin colours, and they're not included in the triggering zone. I'd be interested to see some data on hoe well it works with someone who has dark skin
What a super neat application of computer vision. Cool writeup. Thanks for sharing the code and making it open source too!
This is cool. Simple prototype. Is it dependent on lighting ... what if you are outside or backlit or glare etc...?
I was laughing so much. Thank you. Unexpected tech!
Ignoring whether touchscreen laptops are actually a good idea, I "OOF"ed out loud at this line.
> Filter for skin colors and binary threshold
Skin has an extremely broad range of colors that are also lighting dependent. I'd have gone with background subtraction.
This is amazing. They should start to install upward looking cameras to implement this officially.
People use their laptops under various lighting conditions. I can imagine it would be difficult (or likely impossible) to bring this PoC to a solid production level technology. It looks like a fun project though.
This project brings back memories. I worked somewhere over 20 years ago where we were working on something just like this (touch displays using cameras). The biggest challenge was definitely the lighting conditions as you mentioned. We tried to rely on natural light but it was too unreliable. Darker skin tones were harder to pick up, and then you had issues with random reflections, light and shadow being cast on the screen, etc., which would make the system detect spurious fingers and touches.
We also had algorithms to detect finger shape to detect location of the pointer and when you were touching the screen. I saw way too many videos of fingers touching screens back then, so it's funny to see similar video clips here.
It sounds like a fun project. I worked on a vision based biometric system that used near infrared light as its light source. NIR was supposed to be more stable than natural light but we still experienced issues similar to yours. We found that certain problems appeared at different times of day, and the system also struggled to handle the diversity of people.
I think I could do this for less than 15 cents: four small peices of double sided tape, and the tiny mirror, and two hair pins... but the software? Priceless.
As other people mentioned this is obviously not something I would want in my notebook... but I can still appreciate the cool tech!
I can also definitely see this kind of thing being used in things budget outdoor displays, specially if the UI is made to accommodate the lack of accuracy, and the camera is positioned on the side (since these displays are usually vertical).
Difficult to capture reflections across a large screen while also dealing with outdoor lighting, glare, and moisture. The touchscreen part isn't usually what makes outdoor signage expensive compared to IP65, temperature control, and a secure housing, all of which would still need to apply here.
This looks like a neat option for retrofitting, and I suspect it'd work for some non-screen glass applications too. A combined IR/visible light solution would be interesting too, since I suspect those are complimentary (IR touch has issues with radiant light, while this wouldn't; this would have issues with low/no light, while IR wouldn't).
I almost hear that screen cracking when accidentally closing macbook with the camera inside...
I love Mac since I started using it in 2020, but boy this hardware is fragile. I am scared that I will be held accountable for fixing a broken screen of my work MBP
I don't even imagine how I would be tapping on the screen of my MacBook, not because of its form factor or design, but because of the macOS system itself. It's a different story with the iPad where you can do it endlessly...
Reminds me of Johnny Lee's Wii-mote projects...
http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/
Using an external webcam is that not more than $1? cool project though; reminds me of how you could use a Wii remote to create a interactive whiteboard.
Internal with a small mirror
Don't love touchscreens that much.
But I did love my Toshiba Satellite. It was like writing on paper!
Down with capacitive screens and long live Active Digitizers!
It feels real because of the dirty touchscreen.
I don’t want to encourage people touch my screen and smudge things up.
Is there a coating you can apply to the glass to help with smudge marks?
Oleophobic coating is standard on phones and tablets, which is part of why they don’t pick up fingerprints as easily.
Some brands offer coating you can DIY yourself (eg ProofTech OLEOPEL) but these seem mostly designed for phone screens. I don’t know whether they’d be as effective on laptop screens
And this is why modern screens (and eyeglasses) should be cleaned with a damp microfiber cloth and no aggressive cleaners. These coatings are fragile.
I do carefully clean the nosepads with soapy water, however.
The reason we buy macbooks is because they aren't touchscreens.
I always say, people who want a touchscreen on their Laptop never used a really good trackpad. I never missed a touchscreen on my MacBook but when I do something on someone else’s Windows Laptop I often prefer to touch the screen because the trackpad is just terrible.
Checking this profile of a random hacker in 2018, of course they are now working on AI.
I was working on AI in 2018 too :)
At that time, I was quite interested in adversarial examples and ML security.
I wonder how well this would work with my bright blue fingernails that are about .5" longer than my finger.
I then wonder how much recalibration I would have to do when one of them broke and I was poking directly at the screen.
You could still use the keyboard and track pad
You chose to suffer not just with touchscreens. That said, it would probably work just fine.
It's honestly kind of amazing how many things seem to never be tested by anyone with long fingernails. My favorite was the time I picked up a video game controller and physically could not use it because the buttons were in a stylish little recess that meant my thumbnail would have to pass through the plastic housing before I could get the button to make contact.
Brilliant!
sooo clever
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Neeeeveeeer!!! please let macbooks be as they are .. why would I ever choose to put fingers on that beautful screen ... I don't get it!
> why would I ever choose to put fingers on that beautful screen ... I don't get it!
I'm not sure, but bare in mind that the iPad is almost as large of a market as the Mac at this point, and the iPhone has long surpassed Mac revenue. Touching your computer is a very popular sentiment among the grimy-handed public.
There is a reason why the MacBook hasn't been replaced by an iPad with a keyboard and trackpad attached to it. Very different use case.
Still an amazing hack today and I love it. However, I heard Apple are developing a touch screen MacBook this year, and I simply don't get why they're doing that. I don't know what's worse, the ergonomics or the fingerprints.
i used to have a bad touch screen laptop like 7 years ago and back then it made the mobile development more pleasant (both native and web based)
So you mean they're developing the iPad, an insanely popular device, and you're not sure why they would make such a device?
I have been around touch screen Windows laptops for I don’t know how many years now, and I have never felt even the slightest compulsion to touch the screen.